Javelinas talk with second candidate

Baxter led SEO football program from 2001-04

KINGSVILLE - Keith Baxter has proven he can produce a winning football
team at the NCAA Division II level, more specifically in the Lone Star
Conference.

The former Southeastern (Okla.) State coach guided the Savages - now
the Savage Storm after the NCAA-induced mandate to eliminate mascot
names potentially derogative to Native Americans - to a 25-16 record in
four seasons. That included a berth in the 2004 Division II
playoffs.

He would like the opportunity to continue that coaching success at
Texas A&M-Kingsville. And he isn't the least bit worried about the
fishbowl-type aura surrounding a program that owns 26 LSC titles and
seven national championships.

The 43-year-old Baxter visited the city and the campus Wednesday,
the second candidate to come to South Texas seeking to succeed Richard
Cundiff as the Javelinas' head coach. Baxter follows Robert Rubel, the
Tabor College coach who made his visit on Monday.

For Baxter, the scrutiny at A&M-Kingsville is to be expected,
and he uses an old axiom from former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer to
illustrate the point.

"You can't have it both ways. If you want to have that national
power, that nationally recognized unit or program, then that's going to
come with some fishbowl, that's going to come with some tradition,
that's going to come with some history," Baxter said. "I would
correlate this to a monster being created. I use a Switzer phrase,
which probably isn't too good in Texas sometimes, but you've got to
feed the monster. You've got to make sure you keep it going as far as
creating an atmosphere of winning."

Baxter did so at SEO, at which he spent 12 years as an assistant to
Morris Sloan before assuming the top position before the 2001 season.
Southeastern had gone 1-9 in Sloan's final year, so the turnaround
wasn't immediate. The team was 3-7 in Baxter's first season, 7-3 in
each of the next two before the Savages went 8-3 in 2004. Ironically,
SEO was knocked out of the first round of the playoffs that season by
Cundiff's Javelinas 40-30.

Citing a desire to spend more time with his family, Baxter left SEO
after the playoff season and has been the executive director of
leadership and training for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, located in
Durant. But the coaching bug again bit Baxter, who started his coaching
career as a graduate assistant at his alma mater of Northwestern
Oklahoma State in 1986.

"After making that decision, I realized real quick that no jobs are
perfect," Baxter said. "My heart and passion is in college
athletics."

Thus, his interest in succeeding Cundiff, who announced in September
that this past season, his seventh as head coach and 22nd with the
university, would be his last. The draw to apply for the position was
an obvious one for Baxter, he said - a chance to guide a storied
program that struggled to a 3-8 record this season with largely a young
group of players.

"Obviously the expectations from the university and the community
are very high, none more higher than I will place upon myself if I am
here," Baxter said. "We go into every game wanting to win that game,
expecting to win that football game. It would be no different this
year.

"Football coaches, for the most part, expect to put a good product
on the football field and expect to win football games. Certainly that
won't change," he said. "Is it any more intense? Maybe. Does that make
it easier? Maybe, because you've got the tradition, you've got the
history and you've got the fan support."

Baxter and Rubel are the only applicants to date invited by the
nine-member search committee to visit the campus. Athletics director
Jill Willson has said more candidates may be interviewed, and said that
she received four more applications on Wednesday. The hiring process,
one Willson would like to conclude in short order, won't be expedited
just for the sake of hiring a coach, although she said she has been
impressed with the first two candidates.

"For the kids' sake on our campus, and for our own student athletes,
I would like to hire a coach before we go home for Christmas break
because I think that's important to them," Willson said. "But I'm not
going to rush and hire someone that's not good for
A&M-Kingsville."

Contact George Vondracek at 886-3731 or HYPERLINK
mailto:vondracekg@caller.com vondracekg@caller.com